SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Two topics: First seems to be a fairly controversial topic and divided a lot by motivation. My story since I'm new: 13 years ago I discovered cards in my house from her AP basically professing his love, etc (one of them was a valentine's day card...this will be important later...I discovered these cards in December...also important). I confronted her and was told it was a one time kiss and, probably because I was in denial, shock and it was Xmas time (we have 4 kids, all at home at the time) I accepted that but always had this gnawing feeling it was more. I kept the cards. Fast forward to about 3 years ago and I oddly looked at the cards with the plan to finally throw them away. I have no idea how I never connected the dots but when I connected the timeline I realized the Valentine's Day card had to have been given 10 months prior to me finding the card (found them in Dec, Valentine's Day in Feb....as I mentioned, important to the story). At this point I found it VERY HARD to believe it was just a kiss. After 13 years, I caught her off guard and just blurted out "Did you have sex with him?". Caught her completely off-guard and the facial expression said it all. It was multiple times over the course of at least 10 months. Now I was traveling a lot for work and the lack of time together was the reason. Not excuse as she's owned this 100% and done ALL of the right things, thus the attempt at recover. However, I desperately want to contact the AP. I'm self-aware enough to know some of this is vengeful. The risk is a concern as well. No one knows anything about this: kids, friends, other family...no one. In the age of social media, there's a concern he would just "burn the village" and go public. After DDay 1 (kiss) he sent a serial killer type note to my work trying to make it seem like it was from friends claiming they all knew (real head case it turns out). Took me a minute to realize it was him. Shortly after Dday, he called me and I just left the line silent. He clearly wanted to bait me into a conversation and I refused. There's been nothing since. By all accounts, he's happily married now two towns over and miraculously we've never run into each other but we all know that will come eventually. What are folks thoughts on contacting AP's

Second thing is triggered feelings. It's been 4 years and I still get paralyzing waves of emotion. My wife to her credit always asks what wrong and I hate resorting to "nothing" as my response but what do I do tell her?: It's your affair. That's just another chunk of hours of tears that really adds no value to our recovery efforts. This stuff has hit me multiple times over the last two weeks. I've become completely unproductive at work, depressed at home. I fake my way through days as best I can. I re-started therapy (did some sessions two years ago). We've never done couples therapy so would appreciate feedback on that but I think we're past the truth telling part (at least what I want to know) so is that going to help with my triggered thoughts or is individual therapy better? I've written down all my triggers for here which I think was eye opening for her: Our "song" is meaningless now (that stung for her but I'm sorry...not my problem), I threw out my wedding ring...it's at the bottom of a lake if someone wants it (again to her credit, she set up appt with this cool jewelry place to make our own new ones, anyone with his name, any TV show with infidelity in the plot, the restaurant where I know they hung out, business where he works (pretty well known), I hear the word "cheat" and I cringe...doesn't matter the context.

I appreciate all of you and I'm not a religious guy but I think about all of us that are going through this. We didn't ask for it but we have to fight through it. I know it's not a terminal illness or anything close to it but god there are days where it feels so overwhelming.

Welcome to SI. I'm sorry you qualify for membership, but since you do, I'n glad you found us.

First, NC means no new hurts. My reco is to stay away from the ap. He's not the problem.

More important, you write a story that seems to say you've done some rugsweeping and some going back over the same ground again and again.

Being betrayed is traumatic. It brings with it immense anger, grief, fear, shame, etc. IMO, you've got to process those feelings out of your body. To stay together, your WS needs to know you're angry, grief-stricken, scared, ashamed, etc.

You've also got to explicitly define what you want from your M. You've got to figure out what will satisfy you, and she has to figure out what will satisfy her. And your W has to change from betrayer to good partner.

Since this has been going on for a long time, my reco is to find a good IC, someone who will help you recover, whether that means R or D.

Also. the thread https://survivinginfidelity.com/topics/660527/for-those-who-found-out-years-later-part-2/ might help you.

You can heal, even though the A was so long ago. It takes courage and effort, but asking your W if she had sex with the guy says pretty clearly that you courage. And holding all this in for so long indicates you've got a lot of energy that you can use for your healing.

You can get through this and thrive.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:53 PM, Thursday, May 1st]